wooster transit

  • By Tami Lange Mosser
  • February 12, 2014
  • 609
                        
What began as a hospitality shuttle to help move Wooster visitors from event to attraction and back has morphed into a full-scale transit system, and there’s more to come. The non-profit Wooster Hospitality Transit has been awarded a $100,000 grant by the Federal Transit Authority and the Ohio Department of Transportation. That grant has made it possible for the transit system to hire Leslie Baus, who will serve as its mobility manager. Baus, who has a long history of working with local non-profits, said she had heard transit founder/ owner Ken Bogucki was looking for someone to do some grant writing. Her first effort, seeking a grant for a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, was not successful. She tried again, this time seeking funding for the mobility manager. She got the grant, and the job. Bogucki, the proprietor and executive chef at the Wooster Inn, started with one shuttle a few years ago. “He saw the need to get his customers from here to there,” Baus said, “and also to get them around town.” The shuttle soon found another client: college students. Students at both the College of Wooster and the Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute started using the shuttle to get from campus to go shopping, eat out and see movies. But there was even more unmet need in a city that had gone without bus service for nearly two decades. The Wooster Transit now contracts with the Board of Developmental Disabilities to move clients to and from worksites, Baus said. Low-income city residents can now use their taxi passes on the shuttle. And there are agreements for transporting clients of Children Services, Community Action of Wayne/ Medina and Anazao Community Partners (formerly Your Human Resource Center). “When you’re on a fixed income,” Baus said, “you can’t afford that car. You can’t afford that insurance. You can’t pay for gas.” At this point, the transit has two 25-passenger shuttles, two nine-person vans and a car. The shuttles run fixed routes in the day and evening and passes can be purchased for a single ride, for a day or for a month. In addition, Baus said, the car and shuttle can each be rented in their entirety by the hour. The transit employs 10 drivers. Baus noted that because of its contract with the Board of Developmental Disabilities, the drivers must do more than just drive. All had to be trained in CPR and emergency response had to pass background checks. In the end, Baus said, “It makes for better drivers.” There also is car service to both Canton Akron and Cleveland Hopkins airports. Baus’s job in the next year is to assemble all that information, add more to it and create a locally coordinated transportation plan for Wayne County. That plan, which Baus said should be completed by mid-June, will then be available for review and adoption before being placed on file with ODOT. The nice things about that master plan, Baus said, is that it will be available to any entity in Wayne County who wants to seek funding for any program involving transportation. “We want to create a plan,” Baus said, “that is useful to everyone.” And she hasn’t given up on her other project. “My major goal,” Baus said, “is to get a wheelchair-accessible van.” That can only happen with grant money, she said, as even a used vehicle is costly. The transit system, which has moved its base of operations into a building on the Spruce Street Extension in Wooster, is a non-profit, owned by Bogucki and overseen by a board of directors. While it is self-supporting through its day-to-day operations, Baus said expansion will doubtlessly require more equipment, which makes finding additional funding sources so important. “And we’re not about making money hand over fist,” she said. “It’s about providing the community with something they really need.”


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